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Malphite, rocked and loaded.

Ever been a tank and feeling so useless in the end? Yeah, I feel you.
Have you gone mad trying to do a DPS build and end up being so squishy in the end? Yeah, I know what you mean.
Here I bring to you a balance of both so listen up close and pay attention.

BRIEF SUMMARY (Everything will be discussed in detail in the STRATEGY section)

SKILLSGranite Shield (Passive)
Malphite is shielded by a layer of rock which absorbs damage up to 10% of his maximum health. If Malphite has not been hit for 10 seconds, this effect recharges.

At level 1, get Seismic Shard. Use this for harassing or last hitting creeps.

Once you have a point in Seismic Shard, your next skill is Ground Slam. You will be putting points in Seismic Shard and Ground Slam alternately. First Priority is Seismic Shard.

You will not. I repeat, will not be putting points into Brutal Strikes until you can no longer put points in either of the skills mentioned above.

Of course, get Unstoppable Force at level 6 and whenever it's available.

Next thing to discuss is Play Style.

Early Game: From level 1-6, you have your Sapphire Crystal and 2 health potions. What you do is you harass and last hit creeps with either Seismic Shard or Ground Slam. You will be completing Catalyst sometime in between these levels once you have enough gold farmed.

Level 6: Rock and rollin' time now that you have Unstoppable Force. Look for someone with around 500 HP or less or harass those in your lane till they have that amount of HP left. Once you found your target it's time to spike them. Make sure you have enough mana for these skills in order.

Unstoppable Force (R) -> Ground Slam (E) -> Seismic Shard (Q)

Easy gold, heh?

Mid Game: You're pushing lanes, switching lanes, killing targets with your spike. From this point on, you should already have your Ninja Tabi, Phage/Frozen Mallet for chasing. This is where your spells Flash and Teleport comes to play. Around levels 15-16, it's probably okay to complete your Banshee's Veil as you would not really benefit much from Catalyst anymore. And yes, you're still on a tank build this part of the game with around 3k HP.

End Game: Of course you are still the initiator but it's time to get brutal with Brutal Strikes, grab that Infinity Edge and a Green Elixir, while you take your time to complete Last Whisper. Same combo spike here but at the end of your Seismic Shard (Q) you follow it up with Brutal Strikes (W) and just pound on your target like hell, they won't be able to run since you have a snare from Frozen Mallet + Seismic Shard unless they're packing cleanse/ghost.

I usually buy four hearts of gold (jungling), ninja tabi, banshees and then slowly sell hearts as I acquire:

Frozen Mallet
Atmas
Infinity Edge
Phantom Dancer

He usually ends up with a very good dps at this point, but drops like a fly - what do you think of adding some lifesteal into the builds? Also, for junglers, a single point into brutal strikes is decent. A single point into a passive ability is generally always worth it.

Why don't you consider getting atmas? Its moderately cheap, works great when combined with Banshees and Mallet, gives extra crit, and more armour, which you are otherwise lacking. 60+ damage from a 2500 (rough) gold item that also gives 50 armour and 18% crit? You're actually paying about 875 gold for 60 damage - compared to the bloodthirster, which when fully charged gives you 100 damage for 3200 gold, and 25% lifesteal. 25% lifesteal = 2.5*420=1050 lifesteal worth. 3200 - 1050 = 2150 for 100 damage after killing 40 creeps = 21.5gold/damage

Ofc, PD might not be needed for you considering you're going the far cheaper LW for armour piercing and attack speed. I should look into that, maybe. Its just that it doesn't seem too useful considering that a lot of the time the enemy won't have too much armour, unless against an armour stacker (IE armourdillo). Still, extra dodge is nice since you take nimbleness.

Black cleaver could be nice, but the attack speed from LW enhances your high atk damage a fair amount and considering that BW is overkill for non armour stackers, ineffective against high armour stackers then yeah... although BW helps the team.

Again, lifesteal seems like a good idea.... starks, maybe? Atk speed, aura, armour reduction, all seems pretty nice except it doesn't go with LW. Perhaps replace LW with Starks unless against armour stackers? Considering that late game is all about team battles and Starks helps your team massively, keeps you survivability, atk speed... I'd suggest taking starks over LW unless someone else has it. Also means you can take pendant at the start instead of +hp item, which isn't too useful for laning honestly. (Though a rush tactic benefits)

You sure taking flash and teleport are the best of ideas? Ignite can really add to your combo, cleanse is great considering you don't take mercs - Shard + cleanse should be a getaway, hopefully. Flash got an insane nerf that makes it quite weak, especially since in emergencies you have a better built in version of flash.

The utility tree is pretty darn amazing, 5mana/5sec at the start of the game is just awesome. Extra XP, faster summoner abilities, and the upgrades for your two favourite spells, 6% cd reduction, etc.

Thanks for the reply and suggestions, it looks like you really did some math there. xD

I'll try to give some feedback as to why those are my item choices. First of all, compared to the ones posted above, that item set is kind of expensive and most games don't really get that far especially when you really did a good job striking fear into your opponents during mid-game.

Atma's is a nice option to go for but Infinity Edge just really trumps it in terms of priority and importance in a game. PD is good as well but it's really quite expensive (3k gold) when an Elixir of Agility (300 gold) can almost give you the same benefits so that's why we go for Last Whisper, can't ignore the goodness of armor penetration if the game gets this far.

Most of all, the use of the 3 elixirs on the last slot is far better than any item in the game (900 gold total) giving you ~400 HP, 20 damage, 40% attack speed, 20% Critical Chance, ~60 AP, -10% reduced cooldowns.

As for the spells, flash just makes you look cooler on the battlefield when you try to snare or seismic shard fleeing opponents. Masteries, offensive tree no doubt, besides you're not always the target in any game.

Lifesteal.. that will make you look like a sissy, you don't need that, you're Malphite.

Thank you for this guide, I really like the way you build momentum with this going from slow harassment and last hitting to mid-game where you turn the tables run people down stomp your way in to fights and tear down towers. To end game and where ever you decide to fight is where people die!

I would like to offer that you might want to add a little bit of information about the awesomeness of brutal strikes, any type of character attack speed buff and towers. Mal hits so hard that the 6 second counter is enough to destroy a tower with change.

I would like to add that one should not be afraid to jump on into any ruckus that you see. Between your shield, dishing out the hurt and pounding squishys into the dirt you really want to be in on that action. In end game I have popped brutal strikes and dribbled when I saw the awesome crits you can do with Mal. Max I can remember is 808 on a normal hit.

Thank you for this. I will be trying out flash soon as I have been running with exhaust-spec for an additional slow and a counter to physical dmg focus on my-self or teammates. Again wonderful guide and thank you for putting the time into writing it.

I see. Armor stacking is somewhat a good idea and it works in conjunction with Ground Slam. But like you said, this wouldn't really work against casters. If you're against a ranged carry and they have armor penetration and reduction, armor doesn't really help at all.

As for the post above, I really see that you are lacking HP. Malphite only has about less than a base 2k HP which means you're really squishy to be honest.

Also, yeah you can spam Ground slam in about 6-8 seconds because of the cooldown reduction from your items, but you can also be dead already in under 5. That's why my build tries to focus or balance out on all of Malphite's abilities instead of focusing on just one. Brutal Strikes (W) for example.